Thursday started on a mixed note for India at Tokyo Olympics as despite the men's hockey team's historic win against Germany, wrestler Vinesh Phogat suffered a massive defeat after being pinned by Belarus' Vanesa Kaladzinskaya in the 53kg quarterfinals. Vinesh, the first Indian woman wrestler to win gold in both Commonwealth and Asian Games, was one of the favourites for a medal. However, Vinesh had no answer to the supreme defence of Vanesa, who got her revenge from the Indian at the biggest stage after suffering a similar embarrassing defeat 'by fall' earlier this year in Ukraine.
At the same time, while Vinesh is out of the gold medal race, she is still not out of the medal race if she enters repechage, which means a second chance for all wrestlers who lose against both finalists. Earlier in the day, India's Anshu Malik, who had lost her opener to European champion Irina Kurachikina, bounced back to be in contention after the Belarusian progressed to the final. However, the 19-year-old bowed out of the 57kg competition after losing her repechage round 1-5 to Russia's Valeria Koblova, the Rio Olympics silver medallist.
What is repechage in wrestling?
Derived from the French word repecher, which means to rescue, repechage is a rule that provides a second chance to an individual or a team to fight for a third-spot finish despite suffering elimination early in the competition. It gives a wrestler another chance despite a defeat.
The International Olympic Committee first implemented the rule at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. At the Olympics, 16 wrestlers compete in each category divided into two brackets. The idea behind the rule is that a promising team/individual shouldn’t suffer just because they were handed a tough early draw.
Typically, it means that if you lose against someone who goes on to be a finalist in your category, you become active again and will have repechage matches. There are two separated groups of repechage: one group of wrestlers who lost against the first finalist, and another group of wrestlers who lost against the second finalist. The repechage matches begin with wrestlers who lost in the first round against one of the two finalists up until two to the losers in the semi-finals by direct elimination.
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So in the case of an event starting with round of 16, the loser in that round against a finalist will fight against the loser in the quarterfinal against the finalist. The winner of that bout will fight against the loser of the semifinal for bronze. The winners of the two repechage groups will each receive the bronze medal.
Indian wrestlers and repechage
Interestingly, India's Sushil Kumar was the first beneficiary of the repechage rule having suffered a defeat in the pre-quarters of 66kg event. He won India's first-ever Olympics bronze, ending India's decades-long wait for an Olympic medal in the category.
Ever since, Indians have immensely benefited from the rule. A total of three bronze medals have been won by Indians since the Beijing Olympics. The most recent was Sakshi Malik at Rio 2016. In 2012, Yogeshwar Dutt too won bronze from the repechage rounds.
